Was Dragon Ball really completely unknown in America in the late 1980's?

[DB1984]

It was briefly mentioned along with other Japanese anime and live-action shows in Weekly Variety Magazine page 108 on October 8, 1986. I'm also certain people in the U.S. in the late 80's had film prints of the first three films, not to mention foreign exchange students from Japan who knew of the Anime and Manga during that time.

[precita]

Yes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the huge 80's kid fad show at the time, and it started in the U.S. around the same time Dragonball started in Japan.

Kids my age were obsessed with TMNT in the late 80's and early 90's, therefore anime was basically not on most peoples mind at the time. It's actually pretty funny that TMNT was taking America by storm in the exact same time period as Dragonball was doing that in Japan.

[Super Sayian Prime]

Did literally no one know of Dragon Ball in the 1980s? No. Was it mainstream? Absolutely not. Was it even well known among nerd communities? Not really.

[DBZAOTA482]

Yes, in fact there wasn't even a market for anime in general at the time. The market only grew when Akira became an underground hit.

[Hellspawn28]

You had anime fans that knew about DB in the 80's because of tape trending and you even had the show airing in Hawaii in subs.

[Apollo Fungus]

Yes, in fact there wasn't even a market for anime in general at the time. The market only grew when Akira became an underground hit.

That's not true. Like, at all. There was very definitely a market for anime in North America going back to at least the 70's (and I say at least, since I don't know enough that it could very well be possible that there was a market in the 60's). It may not have been as ubiquitous or well-known to mainstream audiences as it was from the late 90's onward, but it absolutely existed. Consider the fact that Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets/Gatchman, Robotech/Macross, Voltron and many other shows are often held in nostalgic regard by children of the late 70's and 80's. Consider how people like Fred Patten or Carl Macek worked to get numerous films and TV shows over to the States, long before Akira had come out. Hell, consider the fact that Akira was one of many culminations of a growing interest in anime*, and not the catalyst that finally created a North American anime market. How could anime NOT have had some sort of market presence with all that in mind?

I suspect Kunzait may show up here at some point and go into more detail on this, but believe me, anime has had a presence in North American culture for far longer than you suspect.

*Other culminations would include the likes of Ghost in the Shell, Dragon Ball Z's mainstream success, and Spirited Away's US release (out of many examples that I'm more than likely unaware of, by my own admission)

[SuperCyan2]

Yes. Instead of the US market starting like all the other Western countries, they first began with Dragon Ball Z then after that it was Dragon Ball GT's turn, not sure where Dragon Ball fits into that confusion. US watchers generally think and feel that Dragon Ball is 'boring' and prefer Dragon Ball Z. That said, most likely don't even know the origins of Dragon Ball's story as they commenced with Gokû as an adult character and Gohan already existed.

Another issue with the US market is that they more or less only focus on DBZ-like series and disregard the rest of anime genre. Even Toriyama's older series, Dr. Slump and Arale-chan didn't get released in US because it'd probably tank and FUNi would cancel within a few volumes after seeing the negative feedback. I do have to thank Saban Entertainment for dubbing the episodes of Grimm Masterpiece Theater (and other relatively unknown anime series in the English market) though the majority are hard to find in English as they were never on DVD. Plus, Saban took more chances and had more variety than FUNimation did.

FUNimation nowadays just plays safe and keeps on publishing the same series without changing much. Mark my words, FUNi will release a 4K Blu-ray release of DBZ Orange Bricks.

[DBZAOTA482]

Yes, in fact there wasn't even a market for anime in general at the time. The market only grew when Akira became an underground hit.

That's not true. Like, at all. There was very definitely a market for anime in North America going back to at least the 70's (and I say at least, since I don't know enough that it could very well be possible that there was a market in the 60's). It may not have been as ubiquitous or well-known to mainstream audiences as it was from the late 90's onward, but it absolutely existed. Consider the fact that Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets/Gatchman, Robotech/Macross, Voltron and many other shows are often held in nostalgic regard by children of the late 70's and 80's. Consider how people like Fred Patten or Carl Macek worked to get numerous films and TV shows over to the States, long before Akira had come out. Hell, consider the fact that Akira was one of many culminations of a growing interest in anime*, and not the catalyst that finally created a North American anime market. How could anime NOT have had some sort of market presence with all that in mind?

I suspect Kunzait may show up here at some point and go into more detail on this, but believe me, anime has had a presence in North American culture for far longer than you suspect.

*Other culminations would include the likes of Ghost in the Shell, Dragon Ball Z's mainstream success, and Spirited Away's US release (out of many examples that I'm more than likely unaware of, by my own admission)

I was being hyperbolic with my comment. Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets, and Robotech, and Voltron were successful but the west didn't really know they were anime at the time and just thought of them as cartoons.

It wasn't till Akira where a serious movement for anime in the mainstream was sparked.

[Kunzait_83]

I was being hyperbolic with my comment. Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets, and Robotech, and Voltron were successful but the west didn't really know they were anime at the time and just thought of them as cartoons.

It wasn't till Akira where a serious movement for anime in the mainstream was sparked.

This is all completely and totally incorrect.

With regards to things like Speed Racer, Robotech, Voltron, etc. what you're doing here is making the very same mistaken and wrong assumption that most people on Kanzenshuu have been making about U.S. anime history for roughly as long as I've been here: you're assuming that the "edited for mainstream kids TV" end of the industry is literally all that there ever was to it prior to either Akira or the late 90s CN-explosion.

This of course is entirely not true at all. The North American anime industry has ALWAYS, from its very beginnings, been two-pronged: the "edited for kids TV" aspect - which is WAY disproportionately over-focused on in this community - is only one of those. The other of course being the home video marker, which was always a COMPLETELY different animal entirely.

As Apollo noted earlier, the history of anime fandom in North America dates back to the mid to late 1970s: well long before Akira was even made, much less had gotten popular on either end of the globe. It started in sci fi convention halls of the latter-end of the 70s, right around the same time that VHS and home video were JUST beginning to become a thing themselves.

Those grass roots quickly grew into the earliest form of the fansub and tape-trading scene for anime in America, which would inevitably give way by the mid-80s into the nascent form of the officially licensed home video end of the North American anime market (AnimEigo, the very first such licencor, were originally a fansubbing group themselves that had gone "legit"). Hell, Viz has been a thing since that very same timeframe (mid-80s or so), pumping out English manga releases - that were readily findable in most comic shops by the early-most 90s - since well before Akira, much less the Cartoon Network boom. None of this happened inside a vacuum: these venues came about and became successful in the first place because there was an audience for them.

Both bootleg fansub/raw VHS trading as well as officially licensed uncut/bi lingual home video releases are things that WELL predate both Akira's Japanese creation as well as its explosion in popularity among the North American home video market. That market for anime on home video in America was already a thing that had long been established and set in place for Akira to have blown up within it. Akira DID NOT "invent" this market. It simply spiked its popularity and notoriety even further to TREMENDOUSLY great degrees.

Once again to reiterate: the North American market for both fansub/raw anime tape trading as well as officially licensed uncut/bi lingual home video releases of anime was ALREADY long in place before Akira came along. By more than a decade in fact. Akira was simply a noteworthy benchmark for its further increase in popularity, not its beginning point. The genesis for North American anime fandom as we know it goes all the way back well into the 1970s.

So all that having been said, was Dragon Ball a known entity within North American anime fandom of the 1980s, pre-Akira? YES. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely yes. Of course it was. Hell, the bootleg tape-trading scene of the time generally knew about and heavily traded in FAR more obscure titles (I take it there are no Cosmo Police Justy fans around here?) than something like Dragon Ball, which was always a monster hit mainstream - relative to anime circles that is - title in just about close to any die-hard anime circles one could point to back then, alongside similarly notable hit series of the time like City Hunter, Fist of the North Star, Kimagure Orange Road, Urusei Yatsura, and Saint Seiya, among others.

If we're mapping out "generations" of fans for Dragon Ball in North America, then the mid/late 1980s fanbase would indeed be the very first generation. I myself, having gotten into the series at the tail-end of 1992, am not even of that first era of American fans; rather I'm more of a "2nd gen" fan who came in as part of a rather MASSIVE second wave of fans who were pulled into the series at the very beginning of the Artificial Human/Cell arc.

By the time I had gotten into DBZ at that point, the English-speaking fanbase for it had clearly been around and established since a good number of years beforehand. Hell, even when I was first reading about it on Newsgroups BEFORE I'd even gotten into watching the anime proper (which would've been around 1990 or so: I'd gotten into anime in general around the end of '89, with none other than Akira as my gateway drug), DB/Z was already a fairly widely discussed topic with countless threads dedicated to it. If anything, back then I was considered a "late comer" to things, as was the whole 2nd wave of Cell-era fans in general. Yes, in 1992, a kid like me was the "looked down upon newbie" in Dragon Ball circles!

Some of the earliest ever fansites for DB were created and presided over by 1st gen fans who were much older than I was. Steve Simmons of course was one of them, as was Curtis Hoffman (creator of the first ever completed DB manga FAQ). Son Gohan (fan pseudonym) as well as a few of the many folks behind then-notable sites like Toriyama.org and Kamehameha! were also much older fans from well before my time.

I'm pretty sure I've talked a little bit before about the differences between 1st and 2nd gen American DB fans from back then in a few other threads on here going back awhile now. Basically, 1st gen latter 80s-era DB fans tended to typically be more fans of Toiryama as a comedic author rather than fans of DB in and of itself specifically, having generally gotten into him and his work through Dr. Slump years beforehand in the earlier half of the 80s.

Hence, those fans usually tended to balk way more at DB's attempts to become more "serious" around the turnover from the original DB to Z eras, which was in stark contrast to 2nd wave fans like myself who didn't have any of that pre-existing baggage for Toriyama's prior material and were pulled into the Cell arc in part BECAUSE of the more "serious" tone - which was obviously still mixed in with plenty of comedy as well - and were attracted to it more as fans of general martial arts/wuxia media (or otherwise just in a more general "hey, look at this cool anime/manga series over here!" kinda sentiment).

I've long held a number of thoughts as to why it is that most modern/millennial Dragon Ball fans have remained so staunchly ignorant about a lot of this throughout the past 10 to 15 years now - apart from the obvious age gap that is, which even still shouldn't be TOO much of a barrier toward learning about these things for a dedicated DB/anime nerd, since just about all of this is still more than readily and easily findable within an afternoon's worth of Googling and Wayback Machining. Some keywords to try include: Carl Macek, Toren Smith, Fred Patton, Robert Woodhead, Seiji Horibuchi, John O'Donnell, Streamline Pictures, AnimEigo, Studio Proteus, U.S. Renditions, Central Park Media, and so on.

Again beyond the age factor, I think that a lot of the reason for this lack of knowledge about pre-Cartoon Network DB (and general North American anime) history stems from, once again, a MASSIVE over-fixation and over-emphasis on anime made for children's Television broadcast viewing within communities like this one. This stems I think from the starting point for so many millennial fans being things like Toonami as well as Pokemon.

Moreover there's also a significant lack of background and experience among most younger fans with the VHS home video market in general from back then: this is again in part due to the age disparity, but also partly due to lifestyle and how many of them were raised (by many people's own admissions and testimonials here going back years now, a great many CN-era fans as kids tended to have their media diets MASSIVELY over-parented and over-regulated by overzealous family members). Thus, most average present day DB and anime fans tend to have a significant lack of firsthand familiarity with exactly how massively popular and widespread anime was within the VHS home video market, going back at least roughly 15 years prior to their first Cartoon Network exposure as kids in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Due to these kinds of factors, there's always been this incredibly dense lack of understanding among younger fans around places like this (and in online DB and anime fandom in general throughout the 2000s) that just about ALL of this stuff - everything from North American anime and manga fandom in general as a whole, to things like fansubbing, scanlating, fan translations, official bi lingual uncut releases, sub vs dub debates, older and informed fans educating younger fans about the differences between the U.S. broadcast and original Japanese versions of titles like the aforementioned Robotech/Macross, Voltron/GoLion, etc. - goes back way, way, way, WAY longer than most of them realize. Well many years, decades even, before any of them ever came along in 1999/2000 with Pokemon and Toonami and what have you.

That's long been one of THE thickest, densest walls of misunderstanding to break down among this community I would say, MUCH more even than even the disparity between the U.S. and Japanese versions of Dragon Ball: the fact that the Toonami era were NOT the first ever generation of audience in North America to "learn" what anime was. That fandom as we know it today DIDN'T start with Pokemon and DBZ in 1998/1999, and that this idea that the only notable footprint anime and manga ever made in the U.S. before then were some hacked up localized dubs of shows like Sailor Moon, Robotech, Ronin Warriors and the like (viewed and consumed solely by an audience of kids who didn't know they were Japanese or what anime was) is and always has been complete and utter BS. BS that is and always has been INCREDIBLY easy to debunk with just a half hour's worth of Googling and a cursory glance at Wikipedia.

Its not just casual fans who make this mistake either: VERY stalwart, notable "big names" (I won't go into who, but trust me: some pretty massively well known and well respected individuals in online fandom, including some very notable people from Kanzenshuu itself) from the past 15 or so years have been CONSTANTLY making this mistake themselves, and have been responsible for further disseminating this utterly and blatantly false narrative that it was either Toonami, or at best Akira, that functioned as "ground zero" for North American anime and manga fandoms as we know them today. It was neither (and I'm a child of the Akira-generation myself), it all dates back WAY long before both.

I myself have been in the thick of this stuff since WAY long before most of you here, and I can assure you that there had long been a GREAT, great many who were here since long before me. This topic has been a continual source of frustration for myself because... honestly it should NOT take a complete and utter nobody like me to set this particular record straight. As I said before, all of this stuff is VERY easy to look up and verify without a whole lot of effort, and always has been right along.

I can understand if you're just some oblivious elementary school kid whose media diet and internet access are massively, massively over-regulated by overbearing helicopter parents: but once you're in your teens and 20s and are spending massive amounts of time on your own researching and looking up hardcore anime and manga minutia online... learning about even some VERY BASIC-most history of the North American anime industry should in NO way be a tall order. Especially given how thoroughly the internet has archived and made readily accessible information on even way, way, WAY more arcane and obscure topics than this one.

And yet time and time and time again, going back to the first wave of Toonami kids coming of age online circa the mid-ish 2000s, there's been this "tabula rasa" narrative about American anime fandom that it all didn't seriously start until the late 90s when the Pokemon generation first came along and heard of this stuff: a narrative that's now been well set in stone as "conventional wisdom", despite being appallingly off-base and flying starkly in the face of the actual reality of those years.

I mean, put it this way: you could walk into literally ANY rinky dink Blockbuster Video in 1994/1995 (which in the grand scheme of history was still not that terribly long ago) and walk out with several large bags full of uncut and subtitled anime, all official and 100% legit licensed, and laying out there on the shelves in plain sight, all long well before the dawn of either Pokemon or DBZ on Cartoon Network. NONE OF THIS was existing inside of a vacuum or shrouded in some kind of huge Illuminati-like secrecy (which is the utterly ridiculous and completely false popular image that the majority of younger or post-CN anime fans have often painted of the landscape prior to 1999 or so). People bought and watched this stuff: fairly regularly, and in greater numbers than many of you realize.

Furthermore: how else do any of you, who were Toonami kids at least, also think that you were coming across "spoilers" for Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT online on various fansites back in the late 90s? Or fansub tapes? Where do you think all that information and all those tapes had come from initially? Who do you think that they were INTENDED FOR to begin with? People in these kinds of discussions now in this community have for a VERY long time now tended to almost act like all of this stuff just magically materialized from wholecloth out of thin air JUST for their middle-school selves to happen upon, existing beforehand within a completely hermetically sealed-off vacuum.

The greater issue with all this is that this is one of several major fan community online throughout the 2000s and 2010s who tends to often act like all of pop culture and nerd culture within the 1980s and 1990s 100% revolved itself around the whims of children's cartoon television. There's long been this over-projection of people's early childhood memories from the late 90s and early 2000s onto the wider breadth of media from back before their time; as if just because for many of you as children there seemed to exist nothing but the Toonami, Nickelodeon, and Kids WB lineups and things along those lines, so too was how it also was for EVERYONE ELSE back then.

Obviously this is in NO way the actual case, and both the mainstream non-nerd popular culture and nerd/niche-media cultures of the time were focused on MUCH different and WAY broader-ranging material than simply stuff like Transformers, TMNT, Power Rangers, etc. If anything, stuff like that you'd find was generally cared for by virtually NO ONE back then who wasn't a very small child themselves: and sometimes, not even then as plenty of kids back then never got into stuff like that at all and just bypassed it completely in favor of largely regular, adult-skewing media of the time (ahem *raises hand*).

Damn sure almost no 15 to 20 year old, much less 30 year old, from the entirety of the 1990s gave two flying shits about what Cartoon Network was doing, and certainly didn't look to Saturday Morning Kids Shlock TV as any sort of "barometer" for what was "hip" or "cutting edge" in media at the time. Obviously not in the mainstream, but also DEFINITELY in NO way within even "nerd culture" of the time either. Nonetheless though, whenever the history of both anime and even broader geek media as a whole is discussed on sites like this one, its always from a starting point that this sort of children's media somehow is and always was THE primary-most focal point of geek culture purely because that's how it was for most of the people posting here growing up as children.

This I think also is one of the factors laying at the heart of this misunderstanding about anime's North American history: anime's home video beginnings in the U.S. was something that had always firmly laid WELL OUTSIDE of that kind of "after school kids' cartoon TV" sphere of media, instead attracting MUCH older people with MUCH different palettes of media interests and focus. The two realms didn't start to really criss-cross and overlap UNTIL the big Toonami/Cartoon Network explosion at the turn of the millennium: prior to that point for about 20 years or so, the kids' TV broadcast and adult home video arenas for anime were always MUCH more gated off and separate from one another, due to being aimed at two WILDLY different and wholly unrelated stripes of audiences and demographics.

Most people from this community, and other community's like it, were in NO way from or had ANY exposure or experience with the kinds of folks who were the prime target demo of the home video Seinen-dominated anime market in America before, and instead spent their whole childhoods (and in many cases, even adulthoods) largely swimming in the waters of mainstream kids' TV cartoon broadcasts.

This to me is THE heart of the divide here, and why it is that there's such a thick, dense barrier of understanding when someone from my generation and area of fandom interacts with the kinds of younger folks like most of you here who are from this other, largely separate and disconnected area of fandom.

Long story short: the post-Cartoon Network fanbase has always from the beginning to now had an INCREDIBLY insular and largely self-limiting sphere of knowledge, experience, and even basic intellectual curiosity about both broader anime and wider geek-media as a whole, one that is firmly centered and fixated around children's TV animation first, foremost, and oftentimes exclusively: which in the grand scheme of things is an UNBELIEVABLY MINUSCULE and microscopic fragment of what else is out there and what else has contributed to both anime's North American history as well as nerd media in general across the board.

This has always from day one been an UNBELIEVABLY MASSIVE and glaring elephant-in-the-room blindspot of this community and of a vast stretch of millennial anime fandom as a whole, and that blindspot has lead to a larger outlook of both anime and broader media-history as a whole among this generation that has always been incredibly and thoroughly skewed and biased towards over-fixating on children's cartoons and TV shows, often at the direct expense of - oftentimes quite literally - everything else.

This is much of the topic about the disparity between generations of anime fans that I'd for a very, very long time now wanted to spend more time digging into more thoroughly within a thread of its own, but I suppose I just outlined the very basics of it right there. Regardless, its an INCREDIBLY crucial and important topic when trying to discuss a lot of the breakdown in viewpoints between generations and segments of fans that often leads to the heated arguments and debates we tend to get into around here about all kinds of various topics.

The nature of these debates are driven in large part by our various perspectives on film, TV, and media as a whole: and the disparity largely I've found, after nearly 15 years worth of experience on both this site as well as interacting with younger fans on the whole, tends to boil itself down to this unbelievably weird but nonetheless tangible inexperience (and in some cases even out and out hostility and mistrust) that much of this community and fanbase has with older-skewing media that exists outside the realm of children's TV and animation.

That divide and disparity is also partly behind why I think it is that martial arts media has been such a walled-off and unexplored (but no less MASSIVELY important for Dragon Ball) topic for most fans past the CN-era, and its certainly at the heart of why it is that a topic as seemingly basic, and indeed as exceedingly easy to look up and learn about, as both Dragon Ball and broader anime's history in North America prior to the late 90s remains shrouded in such a fog of misunderstanding for a lot of people here. In order to really get onto that trail in the first place, you have to have at least SOMEWHAT of a vested interest and intellectual curiosity for media that has little to no connection whatsoever with that of kids' TV animation and programming: something which ABSURDLY little of the fanbase from throughout the lion's share of the 2000s and onward has really had very much of.

[doomydoomydoom]

You're basically right; anime fandom of course did not begin with the late-90s boom nor with the release of Akira, and neither Akira nor Streamline's other releases were the first uncut anime released. Osamu Tezuka's Cleopatra film was given a dubbed and subtitled release in America in 1972, although it bombed, the critics destroyed it and those who went to see it demanded their money back -- it had been marketed as the first hardcore porn cartoon. It pissed Tezuka off big time. The subtitled and dubbed materials are lost. Also, there was a hentai video released by a porn company in the mid-80s, called "Brothers Grime X-Rated Cartoons" or some such crap. Anyway, these were nothing but freak occurrences to be sure. These were not instrumental AT ALL in affecting anime fandom and happened outside their borders.

So there really wasn't any uncut and subtitled home video releases of anime before the late 80s, which is when Akira was made (Streamline released it here in the U.S. shortly after, during Christmas 1989 where it played for 2 1/2 weeks in Washington D.C., into 1990). So to say that a market for uncut anime releases and fansubs were a thing LONG before Akira is not necessarily the case either. Fansubs of anime were virtually non-existent because it cost at least $4000 to undertake such a project...outside of two: one Lupin III episode in 1986, done by C/FO on a Commodore Amiga, and the first two episodes of Ranma 1/2 in 1989, which is said to be the first WIDELY-DISTRIBUTED, POPULAR fansub. Any others are lost to history, although some say there certainly were other efforts.

So, these fansubs being well outside of the norm, in the late 70s - late 80s fans had to rely on fan scripts typed by someone who spoke Japanese, or live interpretation by somebody who spoke Japanese in the video room of the anime club, as well as guides typed up by same in conjunction with other fans. This is how fans got even rudimentary info out for shows like Cat's Eye, Dirty Pair, and Fist of the North Star which, contrary to your assertion was NOT a hit in 80s anime fandom; Robert W. Gibson, who was OBSESSED with it in the 80s, could not get anybody interested in the series outside of him and a few friends and virtually all fans grumbled that it was corny and boring. Wouldn't be popular at all in fandom until Streamline released the movie in 1991, and even that was dismissed by many as corny and filled with plot holes. Gibson also posted on his blog (too lazy to link but Google will get it for ya) a picture of a Cat's Eye sweatshirt someone gave him and he refers to the broken-Engrish text in the picture on the shirt as "GOLD!" because it described the premise of the series, and again, basic information like that was hard to come by for a lot of series.

Of course we all know by now that TV stations such as Hawaii's KIKU and the Nippon Golden Network cable channel in Hawaii subtitled and aired Captain Harlock, Dragon Ball, etc. The earliest official uncut and subtitled anime video release, by all accounts, was Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 by AnimEigo in 1989. U.S. Renditions followed in March 1990 with Gunbuster. Robert Woodhead, for his part, refers to his and Roe Adams's "test sub" of Vampire Princess Miyu as "the first fansub". So he forgets about that Lupin episode and those Ranma episodes. Oh well.

As for Dragon Ball, no, of course it was not COMPLETELY unknown; it was very much known inside of anime fandom. And there were of course those NGN subtitled episodes which made their way onto tapes. The ones of course who really got the word out about it in the early - mid-90s were guys like Steve Simmons and Curtis Hoffmann, Hoffmann of course being known for writing summaries of the manga. These are still floating around here and there. But I would say the focus was largely on series such as Saint Seiya, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Dirty Pair, Urusei Yatsura, etc. rather than Dragon Ball.

[Kunzait_83]

You're basically right; anime fandom of course did not begin with the late-90s boom nor with the release of Akira, and neither Akira nor Streamline's other releases were the first uncut anime released. Osamu Tezuka's Cleopatra film was given a dubbed and subtitled release in America in 1972, although it bombed, the critics destroyed it and those who went to see it demanded their money back -- it had been marketed as the first hardcore porn cartoon. It pissed Tezuka off big time. The subtitled and dubbed materials are lost. Also, there was a hentai video released by a porn company in the mid-80s, called "Brothers Grime X-Rated Cartoons" or some such crap. Anyway, these were nothing but freak occurrences to be sure. These were not instrumental AT ALL in affecting anime fandom and happened outside their borders.

Yeah, I'm well aware of the Cleopatra incident. I didn't mention it precisely because it wasn't really related to nor impacted U.S. anime fandom much (though the failed theatrical run did leave with it a bit of a stigma in some circles).

So there really wasn't any uncut and subtitled home video releases of anime before the late 80s,

Maybe my dates are off, but I could've sworn that AnimEigo released Madox closer to '87 or so (which indeed is the first release that truly started the home video anime licensing boom). Hence why I posited the beginning as more the mid than late 80s. Either way, its a sticking point of just a couple years difference.

Woodhead meanwhile talked of not only test subbing Miyuu, but also Bubblegum Crisis as well. BGC was his big passion project that got him into anime in the first place (near as I can recall) and the only reason I think that they started with Madox rather than BGC was because Madox was A) a one-shot OVA and thus a cheaper/safer investment to start off with and B) they ended up wanting to take a crack at not just subbing but also dubbing BGC (which of course turned out infamously terrible, but that's neither here nor there), which further put that project off till a short time later after Madox.

So to say that a market for uncut anime releases and fansubs were a thing LONG before Akira is not necessarily the case either.

Again, maybe its because my AnimEigo timeline is off, but this would basically boil down to a difference of one to two years. Either way, my wording probably should've reflected the tighter timeframe.

Any others are lost to history, although some say there certainly were other efforts.

There almost certainly were. I've heard of titles thrown about ranging from Dagger of Kamui to Dominion Tank Police to some of Dirty Pair.

and Fist of the North Star which, contrary to your assertion was NOT a hit in 80s anime fandom; Robert W. Gibson, who was OBSESSED with it in the 80s, could not get anybody interested in the series outside of him and a few friends and virtually all fans grumbled that it was corny and boring. Wouldn't be popular at all in fandom until Streamline released the movie in 1991, and even that was dismissed by many as corny and filled with plot holes.

Like I said, I didn't find out about and get into anime until the ass-crack end of '89 or thereabouts. But for as long as I can recall, Fist of the North Star had a heavy-sized presence in fandom. I don't have concrete dates in my head, but I clearly remember discussion threads for it ranging back several years before I entered into things, and at the very least there were people I talked to in real life within the comic shop scene who were at least aware of it.

Was there also a hate-dom for it that denounced it as dumb? Of course there was, but you had that for virtually almost EVERY series: even Dragon Ball during the heyday of Z attracted its share of anime fans who wrote it off as stupid and juvenile (one of my favorites was one screed written by someone circa '93/'94 or so that pointed to Goku's hick-like dialect as evidence of the series' being so stupid that it even had a poor grasp on basic Japanese grammar, not understanding that this was an intentional and character-specific trait).

But regardless, Fist still had enough of a draw to pull in some measure of people who were pimping it in various corners of fandom.

I remember Gibson's stories about trying, and failing, to get more fans into it from way back, but I suspect that that's something that comes down to a difference of which specific circles of folks you hung out in (not a whole lot of crossover appeal for something like Fist among those more heavily predisposed to stuff like Kimagure Orange Road and Urusei Yatsura). From my end, as someone who was always more heavily on the "grindhouse-esque/martial arts/action" end of things, Fist has always been a marquee title and was among the earliest anime series I'd gotten into, even well prior to DB.

Without a doubt though, the Streamline release of the anime movie bumped up its presence by a great, GREAT deal. I would certainly attribute that bump in notoriety for the reason that the '95 Gary Daniels HBO live action movie got made in the first place.

As for Dragon Ball, no, of course it was not COMPLETELY unknown; it was very much known inside of anime fandom.

Of course. Which is what the whole point of the first half of my earlier post was.

But I would say the focus was largely on series such as Saint Seiya, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Dirty Pair, Urusei Yatsura, etc. rather than Dragon Ball.

Don't forget Kimagure Orange Road.

But yes, while those shows were indeed overall more heavily focused on and discussed, DB certainly was by no means some odd obscurity shunted off to the side. It got its share of fixture as well back then, which is the ultimate point I was driving at.

[MrTennek]

Nice walls of text. Try condensing your thoughts in the future please...

[VegettoEX]

Nice walls of text. Try condensing your thoughts in the future please...

Well-written looks at history filled with citations and context with the purpose of educating is encouraged here.

[dougo13]

You had anime fans that knew about DB in the 80's because of tape trending and you even had the show airing in Hawaii in subs.

DB started to air in Hawaii in 1992. Dr. Slump had been on in Hawaii in the 1980s...

[doomydoomydoom]

I remember Gibson's stories about trying, and failing, to get more fans into it from way back, but I suspect that that's something that comes down to a difference of which specific circles of folks you hung out in (not a whole lot of crossover appeal for something like Fist among those more heavily predisposed to stuff like Kimagure Orange Road and Urusei Yatsura). From my end, as someone who was always more heavily on the "grindhouse-esque/martial arts/action" end of things, Fist has always been a marquee title and was among the earliest anime series I'd gotten into, even well prior to DB.

Without a doubt though, the Streamline release of the anime movie bumped up its presence by a great, GREAT deal. I would certainly attribute that bump in notoriety for the reason that the '95 Gary Daniels HBO live action movie got made in the first place.

Yep, for sure it probably did come down to which circles fans hung out in. I don't doubt at all that it had that crossover appeal with martial arts/general action movie and superhero fans, which I'm sure is why you encountered general comic buffs who were into it. I was initially attracted to it myself because of that legendary "graphic and adult" shock factor, its ice-smooth 80s AOR/hard pop & rock soundtrack and its dark fantasy setting. But then again, I have broad tastes myself so I never could figure how people would be precluded from liking it just cause they like Maison Ikkoku, Macross, or KOR.

And yes, I would credit the movie as being the sole reason we got a live-action American remake starring Malcolm McDowell as Shin (?!?!?!) and Chris Penn as Jagi (?!). Too damn funny.

As for Dragon Ball, no, of course it was not COMPLETELY unknown; it was very much known inside of anime fandom.

Of course. Which is what the whole point of the first half of my earlier post was.

That wasn't aimed at you; I felt the need to reiterate that particular point in response to the topic question of this thread, both so that folks have some context and so that my post wouldn't be a big info dump of nothing to do with Our Franchise. LOL.

But I would say the focus was largely on series such as Saint Seiya, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Dirty Pair, Urusei Yatsura, etc. rather than Dragon Ball.

Don't forget Kimagure Orange Road.

Ooh yeah, can't forget KOR. Though America seems to have. (I bought the various digital releases with their crappy UK English translations and everything. I really did my part. :( I didn't fall for the same trick when that FotNS e-reader thing came out though...)

[Sailor Haumea]

To add to Kunzait's point, Astro Boy was airing on NBC from September 7, 1963 to August 20, 1965. And then it was airing in syndication for another entire DECADE after that.

[ABED]

Kunzait often brings up bootlegging, but how big was that market? I have a hard time believing it was ever all that big, and certainly nowhere near mainstream. I'm sure DB was known in the US, but it was a very small number of people.

[Kid Buu]

Kunzait often brings up bootlegging, but how big was that market? I have a hard time believing it was ever all that big, and certainly nowhere near mainstream. I'm sure DB was known in the US, but it was a very small number of people.

Dragon Ball has never been mainstream in the US. Not even now.

[ABED]

Kunzait often brings up bootlegging, but how big was that market? I have a hard time believing it was ever all that big, and certainly nowhere near mainstream. I'm sure DB was known in the US, but it was a very small number of people.

Dragon Ball has never been mainstream in the US. Not even now.

It's not obscure either. I don't know if anyone knows how big the tape trading market for anime was back in the 80s, but I doubt DB was traded amongst millions of fans. DB at its zenith in the US was watched by millions.

[Kid Buu]

Kunzait often brings up bootlegging, but how big was that market? I have a hard time believing it was ever all that big, and certainly nowhere near mainstream. I'm sure DB was known in the US, but it was a very small number of people.

Dragon Ball has never been mainstream in the US. Not even now.

It's not obscure either.

I mean, if you're comparing the audience who got the series on bootleg in the US vs the audience that it had during the initial Toonami run or now, I imagine the latter is bigger. I wasn't there for that era though, so I couldn't say for fact.